NU TO SHUT ITS SCHOOL OF NURSING

Jean Latz Griffin, Public health writerCHICAGO TRIBUNE

Northwestern University will close its Center for Nursing when current students finish their studies, a move that critics-including the director of the center-say will exacerbate the growing shortage of nurses in Illinois.

''I do not agree with the decision to close the center,'' said director Lucille Davis. ''There is a national and international nursing shortage. That is the primary issue. We need nurses at the baccalaureate level and those who are trained in the clinical specialties of pediatric and geriatric nursing.'' Northwestern spokesman Chuck Loebbaka said the center is being closed because enrollment has been declining and the program has run on a deficit budget for two years.

''When you run a deficit for two years in a row, it is time to look at shutting down the program,'' Loebbaka said. ''We won`t accept any new students after September.''

Davis said she found out Thursday that the center was to be phased out.

''Even though I had been involved in discussions over the past year about the future of the center, at no time was I involved in the decision to close the program,'' she said. ''I was told that the decision had been made.''

Davis said that although slightly fewer undergraduate students will be in the four-year program this year compared with last year, the graduate program is growing. And Davis said she hoped that new grants would enable the program to finish the 1988-89 school year with a slight surplus.

The program has 35 undergraduates this year compared with 40 last year. The number of students seeking master`s degrees is up to 42 from 27 last year, and 20 more students are expected to enroll in the program on the Chicago campus before classes start in the fall, Davis said.

Northwestern University is one of 22 universities or colleges in Illinois that offers bachelor`s or higher degrees in nursing, according to the Illinois Nurses Association.

Louise Shores, executive director of the association, said the impending demise of Northwestern`s program is a bad omen for nursing in Illinois.

''As we look at the possibility of getting fewer nurses, the future looks increasingly bleak,'' Shores said. ''Already, 10 to 20 percent of available nursing positions in the state are vacant. We are concerned whenever a program has to close its doors.''

Shores said that the situation in Illinois is part of a national nursing shortage. The shortage has been triggered in part by pressures to reduce health care costs and in part by the changing labor market for women.

''People are pushed out of hospitals faster now, which means that the people who remain in hospitals are sicker, that there are more sick people in nursing homes and more people who go home still sick,'' Shores said. ''All of that creates a greater demand for skilled nursing care.''

''At the same time, women can now choose many fields to go into, rather than just nursing or teaching,'' Shores said. ''They are choosing higher-paid fields and those with greater opportunity for advancement, leaving us critically short of bedside nurses.''

The American Medical Association recently announced a new program to train ''registered care technologists'' to make up in part for the nationwide shortage of 300,000 nurses.

The nurses association opposes that program, Shores said, but plans to devise its own category of nursing assistants so that nurses will be freed to perform duties that require advanced training.